Florida governor Ron DeSantis, discussing COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters, November 4:
Ultimately, people should be able to make these decisions. I don’t think people want this decision yanked away from them. I don’t think they want to allow a precedent where the federal government could come in and just force you to do what it wants you to do. And make no mistake about it, those individuals who have been gone through a normal vaccination series for COVID, you will be determined to be unvaccinated very soon. They will do that. They are going to tell you, “You’re unvaccinated and you have to get a booster. Otherwise, you could potentially face loss of employment or other types of penalties.”
The subsequent headline in The Independent: “Fact Check: DeSantis falsely claims vaccinated citizens without boosters could be declared unvaccinated and lose their jobs.”
The news in Axios, this morning: “The emergence of the Omicron COVID variant is turbocharging the push for vaccine boosters, and experts say a booster may soon become a requirement to be considered ‘fully vaccinated.’… Bob Wachter, chairman of the University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine, told Axios he expects vaccine mandates will soon include requiring boosters.”
But we had been reassured that needing a booster to be considered fully vaccinated was a false claim! Apparently DeSantis was just correct too early.
It is clear that quite a few self-appointed “fact-checkers” begin with the assumption that Ron DeSantis must be wrong about everything.